


supersynesthesiac

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism)



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst and Porn, Background Poly, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Mind Meld, Porn With Worldbuilding, Psychic Bond, it's not really PWP but there isn't a PWW tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-31 07:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12677316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow
Summary: It’s two in the morning and Mike is on another rooftop looking out over the riverwalk, when Thunder’s voice flickers to life in his head.  The sharp white and blue prickles, the humming static, the aching dark red throb of self-hatred, a sudden bright flood.Mike still has no idea what his face looks like—he’s a private guy, Mike can respect that even if it makes him kinda sad—but it’s been months since the…accident…and Mike has had plenty of time to get intimately acquainted with Thunder’s anxiety.It's just something you get used to, when you're teamed up with a psychic.





	supersynesthesiac

**Author's Note:**

> From a smut-prompt generator that I have long-since lost the link to, which gave me:  
>  _Trope: Superheroes/Superpowers_  
>  _Prompt: Telepathy (also Bonds and mental abilities; Special powers and skills; sudden mutual telepathy)_  
>  _Kink: Well-fucked (being fucked out; fuck-dazed; sated and sleepy; wrecked)_
> 
> ................how was I supposed to say "no" to that?

Mike Chilton dangles his feet over the edge of a rooftop, looks out over the Detroit River, and eats a sandwich.

It’s a pretty good one compared to his usual dinner, which is a probably-not-expired-whatever’s-in-my-fridge stir-fry and a thermos of the morning’s old coffee.  It’s a good sandwich!  He’s enjoying it.  The sandwich place was getting robbed by some small-time crook with four arms and a pissy attitude—Mike took him down without breaking a sweat, and now he’s got a free sandwich out of the bargain.  

Plus, it was a good warmup, and the thought of Kane’s face when he reads the note Mike left on the guy’s chest is immensely satisfying.  That makes tonight’s score 1 for Mike Chilton, Dangerous Vigilante, and 0 for the New Detroit Police Department, AKA Kane Co. security with new badges.

…It’s a pretty quiet night, though.  Mike finishes his sandwich, licks sauce off his fingers, shoves the wrapper in his pocket for next time he comes across a trash can, and pushes himself upright.

 _Thunder,_  he thinks,  _you up?_

Nothing.  No answering thought, not even a flash of  _go-away-don’t-bother-me._   Either his partner isn’t awake or he’s too busy to answer Mike right now.  When Mike tries to find the place in his head where their thoughts connect, he gets nothing but a muted hum, a faint idea of presence. 

Well…okay then.  That’s okay.  It’s nice, having a psychic around to keep an eye out for trouble and tell Mike where to go, but he made do without for months before they met each other.  Mike can find his own trouble.

He pulls off his mask and stows it away, then swings down onto a fire escape and starts to make his way down to the dark streets below.  Overhead, the decorations from Detroit's Octocentennial wave forlornly in the damp night air, looking kind of sad and limp after the evening's rain.  The streets are pretty empty, and the few people who are out are walking fast, heads down.  Nobody's going to look twice at Mike, even with his face plastered on billboards all over the place.  Even if one of Kane's dirty cops catches him, they're nothing Mike can't handle.  Mike's...not an ordinary guy.

\--

Three months before the Detroit Octocentennial, Mike gets A Very Important Mission.

Mike doesn’t usually do  _missions,_ really.  Mostly he hangs out and just stops crimes wherever he happens to run across them.  But Julie—Ninelives, yeah, codenames, right—she says he’d be a good fit for it, and she’s got somebody who could help him out.  Says there’s a…relic, something, some kind of thing that Kane is looking for.  Julie says the name for him, but it's in some ancient dead language and Mike can't pronounce it.  In English, though, it's called the _Liar's Skull_.  It sounds really cool.  Apparently it helps you see through things--lies, maybe, or possibly just the dark?  The texts Julie’s found on it aren’t really all that clear on what it does or how you use it, just that it’s powerful and _really_ old. 

Not that it matters—If Kane wants it, Mike wants Kane not to have it.  He was on-board from the first sentence.  He's ready to go for it on his own, too, but apparently that's  _a bad idea, Mike, wait for backup Mike, it's not your territory Mike, you need somebody who_ knows the area!!  

Mike has never met Blonde Thunder before that night.  Heard of him, vaguely—heard there was a psychic over on the eastern edge of town, coordinating downtown heroes like the supernatural version of a police scanner. He’s never met the guy, though.  No idea what he looks like, not even entirely sure he's a he.  Mike, who hasn't had a secret identity since he was, like, fourteen, doesn't really get the whole _air of mystery_ thing.  But hey, whatever makes the guy comfortable.

In the end he doesn’t, technically, meet Blonde Thunder that night.  He goes to where he’s supposed to—an old church, bought out hundreds of years ago by some greedy collector with an interest in things that weren’t meant to be collected.  Holy artifacts from religions nobody remembers, ancient books impossible to read.  The place is cleaned out, now, but Julie says there’s intel that the man who used to own the collection hid one more artifact in there.  The Liar’s Skull. 

Mike is only waiting outside the church for five minutes or so before he feels a weird jolt up his spine and a voice in his head says  _are you Mike Chilton?_

Mike’s first thought is  _what?_  And then  _that was weird,_ and then the voice in his head says  _dude, are we going or what?_  And he realizes what’s going on.

“I thought you were coming in with me,” he says, to the darkness all around him.  He feels, more than hears, Blonde Thunder snort. 

 _I’ll follow you in._   There’s a sense of wary tension under the thoughts, a feeling like… _don’t look, don’t look_.  Like the quiet, frozen stillness of pressing yourself against the wall of an alley, listening for the footsteps of the people who were following you.

“What, you don’t want me to see you?”

_Exactly._

“That’s not real hospitable, dude,” says Mike, and he’s mostly teasing but he is a little bit injured.  “You can trust me.  You know that, right?”

There’s a moment of silence.

 _No,_ Thunder says.   _I don’t.  And I can’t.  Let’s just do the job we’re here to do, okay?_

Mike opens his mouth to argue—but Thunder’s presence in his head is gone again. 

\--

It’s two in the morning, and Mike is on another rooftop looking out over the riverwalk, when Thunder’s voice flickers to life in his head.  For a few minutes it’s so faint Mike can’t tell the feelings apart from his own—but then a sudden prickle of nerves goes up his back, and he blinks and realizes what he’s feeling.  Nothing crosses through the bond like anxiety.  The sharp white and blue prickles, the humming static, the aching dark red throb of self-hatred, in a sudden bright flood.  Thunder's not sending it to him on purpose, Mike doesn't have to really let it get to him unless he wants to, but he can still feel it when he closes his eyes.  See the colors like they're painted in front of him, overlaying the dim, mundane color of the neon far below.

 _H_ _ey, buddy,_  he thinks, reaching the thoughts out inexpertly in the direction of the worry, and feels an answering jolt of recognition.  _It's two in the morning, what's got you so worked up?  You need help?_

He feels Thunder’s shock as a bright burst of gold, cutting through the anxiety, then a second later the words filter across the city to him.   _Sorry._ Deeper, more intense than the apology needs to be,  _sorry sorry sorry_  layered over itself.  Jeez, he’s got it pretty bad tonight.  Mike's felt how bad it can get, the gasping, breathless whirlwind of thought and feeling, the sick throb of self-hatred and anxiety--he may not know what Thunder's face looks like, but in the months since the...accident...he's had plenty of time to get intimately acquainted with Thunder's anxiety.  He feels like he's working himself up into something nasty.  

 _It’s fine, dude,_  Mike thinks, as comfortingly as he can.  _Seriously though, is there anything I can do?  It feels kinda not good over there_ _._

 _Oh!_   It’s more a sense of shock and self-consciousness than the word.   _I’m fine!_

And that... _feels_ wrong.  Too strong, a blare of overbright reassurance that rings strangely sour in Mike's head.  Mike frowns, startled.

_...seriously, you're kinda freaking me out over here.  What's wrong?_

_Just_

Sudden silence.  The anxiety picks up, sharp and painful, less a buzz and more a roar.  There’s a layer of jagged purple fear under the static now, actual fear, spiking through the haze. 

 _Go home,_  says Thunder urgently, and the fear colors every word, the careful thread of his connection to Mike is coming apart in clouds of unformed terror and stubborn denial,  _g_ _et away escape go home it’s not safe_ —

_What happened?  Where are you?!_

_Run_  and then then a sudden burst of bright red pain, a stab of shock and fear.   _Run!_

Mike pulls the skull mask down over his face and takes off running. 

He follows the stream of Thunder’s thoughts across rooftops, through dimly-lit neon darkness.  The river glitters sullenly at him as he slows, turning his head, trying to feel out what direction his partner is in.  _You’ve gotta help me, show me, show me where you are—_

 _No no no no no away get AWAY you_ idiot _please just_

South, down the river.  Mike takes a running start and clears the gap between two buildings, rolls and comes back up, takes three more jumps in quick succession, never losing momentum.  The closer together they get the more Mike’s powers kick in; the presence in Mike’s mind gets louder as his powers boost Thunder’s telepathy, and Mike runs faster on the feedback, jumps higher, never misses a step. 

The Ambassador Bridge is as busy tonight as it ever is.  Mike drops down off the last rooftop, scales down a fire escape and drops into the shadows, jogging down the riverfront, eyes half-closed as he listens.  Far overhead, traffic hums by.  

He’s halfway under the shadow of the bridge, listening for the feeling of his partner’s mind, when a sudden stab of fear and pain shoots through his head again like a migraine, bright and red and overwhelming.  Mike stops, feels his knees wobble under him with fear that isn’t his, and forces himself to breathe.  The feeling fades out as quickly as it came, but whatever caused it leaves a lingering sense of dread—if he just waits for a second…

His suspicion is good. There another few silent seconds, and then it hits again.  A flash of sensation, not just distant murmuring thoughts but vivid, present feeling.  His cheek aches like he just took a punch, his eyes water, his wrists ache.  Dusty air.  Panic in his chest.  Inside a building somewhere; old, stale air.  A flickering light.

There’s only one building up and down the riverside that Mike can see.  It’s an ancient, broken-down thing at the base of the bridge—from the look of the thing it was built before the turn of the century and nobody’s remembered it’s there since the Second Revolution.  The windows are broken in, the roof is sagging in one place, and the door is splintered inwards like somebody kicked it in.

There’s a light flickering inside.

Mike breaks into a run, boots crunching on the ancient pavement and gravel, and then slows and reaches for his staff as he gets close enough to see the dark, gaping hole where the door used to be.  Only one entrance.  If there’s somebody in there— _hurtfearnononorunaway_ —which there definitely is, shit.  _Shit._  

Mike takes another deep breath, forcing himself to think straight, making himself  _think._   Only one entrance, and if there’s a bad guy in there—if he has Thunder as a hostage—Mike can’t go busting in through the front door like he so desperately wants to.  He’s gotta do this  _carefully_.  For a second he thinks, longing, of Ninelives and her illusions, Whiptail’s scuttling little distraction-bots and Stronghorn’s incredibly attention-grabbing entrances—but he doesn’t have time to wait for backup.  Somebody’s hurting his friend in there. 

As if in response to that thought, another jolt of pain and fear shoots through Mike’s skull.  For a second, foreign thoughts and feelings overwhelm his—painful, rough and hot on his wrists, rough rope—eyes up, single light flickering—and a glimpse of night sky.

There’s a hole in the roof.

Mike is moving before he even thinks about it.  There are piles of long-abandoned trash around the building, a broken-down truck-frame, a huge, rotting tire—Mike is closer to Thunder than he has been in months, and his powers are burning up his spine, making him faster and stronger and surer on his feet.  He scales the wall silently, swings himself onto rotting shingles and edges across the roof towards a faint glow.

He’s a few feet from the hole when he hears it.  A familiar voice echoing up faintly toward him.

“ _Where is he now?_ ”

Mike squats down and presses a hand to the roof, focusing—Thunder’s fear flares up his spine, no longer focused on Mike.  Fear turned outwards, fear of what’s going to happen to—no.  Fear of what’s going to be  _done_  to him.  He’s definitely in there, and he’s not alone.  Mike edges closer, testing out the treacherous, sagging roof one step at a time, and peers down into the room below.

There’s only one or two lights still working in the dingy room he’s looking down into; in the nearest pool of light, there’s a boy tied to a chair.  His face is hidden, turned down toward the floor again, and Mike’s never actually seen Blonde Thunder in person but there’s no faking the way his powers well up at the sight of the guy, hard and bright in his skull.  _Friend friend friend help him protect strengthen—_ it’s so _strong_ in person, and Mike stops and breathes, letting his powers settle in.  Getting his first look at the guy he’s known for months. 

Thunder’s way skinnier than Mike imagined him, but the blue and gold underarmor and the bulletproof vest he’s wearing is pretty textbook vigilante stuff.  Very 21st century superhero.  It covers him up to the neck and down to below the elbows, and a pair of black gloves, battered boots and torn-up jeans cover basically every other possible inch of skin—there’s blood around the rips in his jeans, on his scuffed knee, splattered on the front of his shirt.  He raises his head minutely as Mike watches; his shoulders hitch a little bit like he’s muffling a sob, and another sharp stab of his fear shoots up Mike’s spine.  Even from up here he can see Thunder’s nose is bloody and his lip is badly split, painting his teeth slick, vivid red.

And speaking of Red…

Mike’s least favorite supervillain melts out of the shadows, circling like a predator.  He’s still got his helmet on, as usual—there’s blood splattered on one of his gloves, vivid red against the black leather. 

“ _He can feel you,_ ” he snarls, quiet but clear.  “ _I know he's coming for you._    _So where is he._ ”

Another weak ache,  _get out of here, run._   Thunder shakes his head aimlessly, murmurs something inaudible and takes another hitching breath, shaking all over.  He jerks and turns his face away as Red’s hand grips the back of the chair, rocking it back a little on its back legs—Mike’s hands close abruptly on his staff when he sees the wet glitter of tears, the redness of Thunder’s eyes and nose.  He’s crying. 

The anger that wells up in Mike’s chest is sudden and unreasonably strong.  It takes everything he has not to jump down there and tear Red a new one, but he grits his teeth and forces himself to shift his weight slowly forward.  If Red sees him coming, it’ll take him seconds to get Thunder between then, to take a hostage.  Mike's only got one shot at this.

“ _Bring him here,_ ” Red orders.  Thunder takes another shaking breath, murmurs inaudibly, and Red makes a vicious noise, half-feral through the voice-distorter in his helmet.  "You little  _fucker._ "

Shock and pain shoot through Mike's skull as Red backhands Thunder hard across one cheekbone with a _CRACK_ that's clear and brutal all the way up through the rafters.  Thunder yelps in pain, and Mike grits his teeth on a groan as a throbbing ache settles in, bright red pain pulsing behind his eyes like splashes of blood.  He thought their link was clear when they connected across the city, but this close it’s on a whole new level; he can feel the ache in Thunder’s chest and face as he takes gasping breaths and spits more blood, feel the tingling pain in his hands and feet where they’re tied too tight to the arms and legs of the chair.  “You’re stubborn for a  _sidekick_.”

Thunder's hands clench on the arms of the chair, a needle of boiling-hot anger cuts through the terror.  He makes a hoarse noise, another one--can't get the words out.   _I'm not a_ sidekick _, I'm--_

And then Red pulls off a glove and wraps a hand around Thunder’s throat and everything goes black and red and rotten. 

Mike hears the distant sound of Thunder’s breathless whimper, then a sharp cry of pain and fear, but he doesn’t have to hear it because he can feel it in his skull, feel Red  _pour_ hate and malice and sadism into their connection.   _I’m willing to hurt you so badly_ , the storm whispers, strong enough Mike can almost hear that hoarse, vicious voice.   _I’m going to_ make _you bring him to me no matter what I have to do to you—_ and there’s no real image, just the knowledge of how to  _hurt,_ the awareness of how much pain is going to happen at his hands, the complete lack of remorse.  Thunder is making this endless, choked noise, like he can’t find enough air to cry, jerking and struggling in the ropes, trying to get away from that  _certainty_ , that willingness to break and destroy—Red holds on.  _I can make you feel this the whole time, I can hurt your body and your mind at the same time, and I will I will I’ll hurt you until he comes to put you out of your misery himself just to make your pathetic whimpering stop—_

The sound of Red's hate is so loud, Mike doesn't even hear himself decide to move.  He's just going, before he can think; swinging forward through the hole, pulling his staff as he falls. Red has just enough time to look up at him and growl “ _WHAT?!_ ” before Mike spins in midair and slams one boot straight into the middle of his tinted visor.

Red goes flying back off his feet with a yell of pain, and Mike rolls and comes up ready to fight and then almost falls off his feet as a sudden bloom of pure gold and green and rose-red rushes through him.  Thunder’s relief washes over him, almost overwhelms him, mixes with his adrenaline and anger into a weird, exhilarating cocktail of fear and anger and joy.  He was so scared, tearing apart with it, burning up--and he's still scared, a thin, knife-sharp whine in his ears, his heart pounding so hard his whole chest shakes with it.  Some part of him is still gasping  _get away no run now we're both in trouble RUN_ but underneath that he's so grateful, so utterly relieved, it feels like he could die.

“Sorry I took so long, buddy,” says Mike, and spins his staff slowly from hand to hand as Red pushes himself up, shaking his head.  Just the sight of that blank black helmet makes Mike grind his teeth, spine prickling with fury.  He’s angry enough the skull mask keeps trying to take over, warping his voice into something ancient and strange—Mike pushes back on that, forces the words to come out in English.  “…I’ll get this guy out of the way and then we’ll get you outta here.  Okay?”

Thunder can’t answer—he’s still gasping, hyperventilating—but his voice in Mike’s mind is a bright, clear thread.   _On the table, the blue and gold disk on the table_  and the action of a throw.  In Thunder’s head, throwing something is a clear, vivid rush of numbers, a calculation on the move.  Mike reaches back and picks up one of the disks from Thunder’s backpack, hefting it in his hand.  It’s about the size of his palm, weirdly heavy, and there’s a little glowing light in the middle.  Mike pulls back an arm, takes careful aim as Red starts toward him, and throws the device as hard as he can right into the center of Red’s chest.

The air around Red flickers white-blue-gold so bright and vivid it’s like lightning just struck him.  He lets out one last roar of frustration and hatred, reaching out, still trying to lunge for Mike, and then there’s an eye-searing flash and a wash of ozone-heavy air and he’s…gone.

Mike stares around—the disk falls out of the air and bounces on the ground.  The light in the middle flickers and goes out.

“What happened?” 

A sense of motion, of flicker-and-change. 

“A teleporter?”  Mike glances back—Thunder nods weakly, eyes still closed.  “To where?”  And then, as the impression flickers into his head, “—jail won’t hold him.  Not with Kane in charge.”

_I know_

_Had_

_To get him_

_Out, away,_ gone

_He was in my_

_head_

Geez, he’s in bad shape.  Mike sighs and gives up on Red—he’s beaten that psycho before, he can beat him again when Kane lets him out of jail.  In the meantime…

“Nice to finally meet you face to face, by the way,” says Mike, and doesn’t even think about it before he reaches up and slides his mask off.  The ropes on Thunder’s wrists and ankles are  _way_ too tight, cutting into his skin—Mike frowns at them and then pulls out a pocket knife and kneels down, putting himself on eye-level.  “…let’s get you outta here.  You think you can walk if I get you loose?”

Thunder stares at him, mouth hanging open, and then licks his bloody lips and shakes his head.  His hair is pure, bright gold—so that’s where the nickname came from.   Big, blue-grey eyes and freckles and kind of a big nose, not that Mike’s one to talk.  It’s not really a handsome face, probably, traditionally-speaking, but it’s good, it’s nice, Mike likes it a lot.  They’re close enough now his powers are white hot inside him, a burning circuit, giving and taking strength—there’s no fight he needs to boost Thunder for, he just _likes_ him, really likes him a lot, trusts him and wants him to be safe. 

 _Thank you thank you god thank you so much holy shit—_ “My gear _,_ ” Thunder says, soft and cracked, and he sounds and doesn’t sound like his mind-voice.  High and soft and nervous.  And right now, choked with tears.    “I—don’t have the stuff to m-make more, yet…”

“You make your own gear?”  It’s all laid out on the table, like Red stripped it all off him before tying him up; a tool belt, a backpack, a collection of small, black-and-silver things Mike doesn’t know the function of.  His goggles, thrown on the ground, gritty but not cracked.  “Is this everything?”

Thunder nods weakly.   _Careful_.  A sense of danger, of weapons Mike doesn’t know how to handle and worry he’ll hurt himself.  Mike laughs and very carefully loads the tools into his backpack.

 _I still can’t walk._   Wobbly knees, numb feet, every muscle feels like half-melted wax after what Red did to his head.  He’s trying to fight himself back under control, Mike can tell.  He’s been there, honestly.  Thunder takes a couple of huge, shuddery breaths, raises tingling, burning arms to rub awkwardly at his face.  Forces himself to stop crying.   _Sorry…_

“No worries,” says Mike, and reaches down to scoop Thunder easily into his arms.  Thunder actually  _squeaks_  and grabs Mike’s jacket, holding on tight as Mike hefts his weight and then strides forward and grabs Thunder’s backpack to swing it up onto his chest. “Hold onto that for me?  Okay dude, here we go.”

He takes the back roads to his apartment, less to keep Thunder from knowing where it is and more because two battered heroes on the streets at this time of night would be an invitation to fight.  Especially when one of them can’t walk.  Fortunately they’re buddies, allies, _friends_ and they’re so close they’re touching and long story short Mike could lift three of him right now. 

He explains all of this, when he overhears a guilty thought about how heavy Thunder feels, how bony and awkward to carry—they’re both tired, so he doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but he feels Thunder give a startled little mental stutter, surprised by the reminder. He almost forgot Mike had powers at all.  Mike feels something touch the conduit of his power where it connects to Thunder’s, the place they’re both drawing energy from.  It’s a strange, prickly kind of awareness; the bond strengthens as Thunder focuses on it and a pleasant little shiver of energy runs up Mike’s spine—

_Let me down?_

Oh.  Well…okay.  Mike lowers him carefully, slinging one of Thunder’s long arms around his shoulders and letting him lean his weight on Mike.  He’s _tall,_ dang.  Mike’s not exactly short, but Thunder’s got a couple of inches on him at least, even standing with his shoulders hunched and his back bent.  Mike gets an arm around his waist and gamely bears as much of Thunder's weight as he can, and together they limp up the stairs to Mike's apartment building and edge into the tiny elevator.

As soon as they get up to Mike’s apartment Thunder collapses onto the couch and yanks his gloves off.  He presses his hands to his temples, rubbing through his hair, and breathes, slow and deep.  With every breath the buzz of anxiety dims a little, until it’s less of an all-consuming static and more of a background to the confusion, the amazement, the pain, the excitement.  Mike’s not the only one who’s glad to finally meet up face to face.

Geez, it’s nice to be somewhere safe again.  Mike reaches up and pulls his mask off.  It shifts and flows, makes the shape of a fist-sized chrome skull again, and Mike clips it back on his belt, stretches and sighs. 

“…okay,” he says.  “Cool.  Now talk to me, buddy, did he hurt you?”  Seeing Thunder sitting _right there,_ on his couch, in his living room, Mike is suddenly aware of what a huge mess the place is.  He strolls over as casually as he can and clears away a pile of jeans hung over the back of Jacob’s favorite chair to dry.  He tugs off his jacket and hangs it there instead, stretches.  Normally he’d have taken off his underarmor too, but he’s pretty sure it’s bad manners to invite somebody into your apartment and just start stripping.  “Uh…I’ve got a first-aid kit, if you need patched up—”

“Just my face,” says Thunder, hoarse and small, and pokes carefully at his cheek and his split lip.  “And my pride, y’know.  Nothing important.”

Mike snorts.  Thunder jumps, stares at him for a second like he doesn’t understand what Mike’s doing and then smiles cautiously and then laughs too, quiet and dorky and surprisingly sweet.  His voice isn’t trembling any more, but he still sounds—oh.  _Sudden impact, unexpected didn’t feel anybody coming, who—_ the memory of an arm as unyielding as steel wrapping around his throat, getting him in a choke-hold.  No wonder he’s hoarse.  Red doesn’t mess around when he wants somebody unconscious.

“…I can still clean up your face for you,” says Mike, and starts to sit down, holding out the first-aid kit.  “—here.  Lemme just...”

Thunder pulls back.  “No,” he says abruptly.  “I—no, I’ll get that.  It’s okay.”

Oh.  “You sure?”

Thunder nods, reaches out—and then flinches and pulls his hands back.  Mike watches, confused, as Thunder hunts around and pulls one of his gloves back on.  He glances up and then sees Mike watching and looks away sharply, pink-cheeked.  

“Thanks,” he says, and then, convulsively, “—sorry.”  His mind is whispering something, uncharacteristically quiet, but over the top of the stream of hidden thoughts there’s  _sorry sorry I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad I’m sorry it’s not your fault I swear._ He takes the kit with his gloved hand, not looking up to meet Mike's eyes.   _Sorry._

“It’s okay,” says Mike, baffled. 

“No it’s not,” says Thunder, and he sounds exhausted.  He doesn’t look up.  “…you saved my life and I’m…” no words, just a deep, pulsing throb of self-hatred, disgust at the way he’s acting.   _Nothing but a weakness in your armor, nothing but a liability_. He pushes himself up abruptly, abandoning the first-aid kit on the seat, reaching for his stuff. “I should go.”  _I should go, I really need to go—_

And then Thunder stumbles, a bright, sudden splash of neon surprise as his weak legs buckle under him, and Mike lurches forward before he even thinks about it, and Mike’s bare hand--

Everything snaps into abrupt focus.  Layer upon layer of thought, from clear words to clouds of sensation and intention,  _God I must look so pathetic_  shading down into amorphous blurs of something hot and red and eager, sweet and white-gold and shy.

“ _Oh,_ ” gasps Thunder, and  _oh, oh god,_  his mind says,  _oh fuck, you feel even nicer like this—_ “—oh, shit, n-no, don’t look at—please don’t look, I swear I’m not—”  _gross weird stupid disgusting hide hide HIDE don’t let him see he’ll think you’re so creepy—_

“Wow,” says Mike, and it comes out breathless and distant.  “Dude, I thought you couldn’t _get_ any brighter.”

White shock blazes past the spiraling fog of self-doubt and hatred.   _He doesn’t look upset_  and then  _he can hear me, you can hear me_  and  _he’ll hate you he’ll hate you you gross piece of shit you creepy waste of space—_

 _I can hear you,_  Mike thinks, and it doesn’t even need to be sent, it doesn’t need any force behind it to reach him like it usually does.  It’s just  _there_.    _It’s okay, it’s seriously okay, stop thinking that stuff about yourself please stay.  Please stay?_

_I can’t I can’t I can’t I can’t I’m nothing I’m awful don’t look at me don’t look—_

_You’re not you’re great please stay please be safe I can’t protect you (hurt wounded in pain because of me) I can’t protect you if you’re not with me._

_Okay!_ His face is very red.  _I’ll stay, just…_

_Do you want me to let go?_

_No YES NO no no never YES please yes_

Mike lets go.  Thunder slumps back away from him, gasping, muted again to a quiet stream of shock and confusion and now a bitter thread of guilty disappointment. 

“Sorry,” says Mike, still dazed.  “I didn’t mean to…wow.”  All that, all those thoughts traded back and forth, and he can’t have been holding on for more than a couple of seconds.  His mind is still reeling.  “ _Wow._ ”

“Sorry,” Thunder echoes back at him—he’s shivering.  “Sorry, I…I swear I’m not a…oh my god…”

He wants to be alone, to not be seen, he wants it _so badly._ He’s scared, he wants to be alone.

Mike pushes himself up, already backing away.  “I’ll just—the couch is pretty comfortable, you can, uh—”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna just…”

“Long day.”

“Yeah.”

Mike flees to the bedroom, but he can still feel the echoes of the timid want under the ache of self-hatred, the question he couldn’t quite make out the words to, the fear of being  _seen_ , of somebody reaching down inside and knowing—

…what?

He dreams anxious dreams full of running that gets him nowhere, full of Red and his poisonous cloud of red and black hatred, full of his own face smiling out of the dark, limned in gold and green. 

\--

Three months ago, the church is abandoned. 

Mike walks in, fearless in the dark, holding his staff ready, but nothing attacks.  He pulls up his mask and stares around the room—nothing.  The places where pews might have been, hundreds of years ago when the church was built, are full of empty display cases now.  Some of them are shattered—some of them are intact.  All of them are empty. 

_Don’t turn around._

The urge to immediately turn around is overwhelming.  Mike stays where he is, looking up at the ancient, half-rotted cross over the altar, and hears soft footsteps behind him.  There’s a soft grunt of effort, like Thunder is lifting something heavy, and then something shifts.  A  _click._   Mike feels Thunder’s satisfaction warm in his own chest for a second before the guy reels it back in.  Mike is a little bit hurt, but only for a second.  Then, with a juddering kind of groan, stone shifts behind the altar. 

A dusty display rises out of the ground; smaller than all the others, with no glass to cover it.  The velvet of the stand is rotted and dusty, but the silver skull in the middle of the stand is bright and gleaming like freshly-polished chrome.  The eye-sockets are utterly black, darker than dark; the silver shows no sign of tarnish or rust. 

The impulse is too sudden and too strong to even think about resisting.  Mike is walking forward, eyes fixed on the skull’s dark eye-sockets, before he even registers what he’s seeing.  The cheap skull mask he was wearing feels irreverent, tawdry and fake—he drops it on the ground, abruptly disgusted by it.  Distantly, he hears Thunder take a breath behind him—feels Thunder’s confusion, and then realization, and then alarm, and hears footsteps break into a run behind him as he reaches out.

“No!” a voice behind him shouts, and a hand grabs his shoulder at the exact same moment his fingertips touch icy-cold silver.  That’s the last thing Mike hears before the world turns off like a flipped light-switch.

\--

Mike wakes up sore and still wearing half of his uniform, with a taste like old socks in his mouth.  He groans as he rolls over—why does his face hurt?

Oh, wait.

Untangling his thoughts from Thunder’s takes a second.  He can tell by the distant blurriness of the feelings that the guy’s not broadcasting on purpose, which means he must be either sleepy enough or feeling secure enough to let his mind relax.  That’s good.  Less good is the tight throb of pain that woke Mike up.  Thunder’s obviously feeling yesterday pretty hard, which Mike would have prepped him for if they hadn’t…

Oh.

Oh, geez. 

Mike stops, frozen, as the events of last night come back in a rush.  That  _connection_ , immediate and completely open.  The rush of thoughts and feelings, so many and so conflicted Mike couldn't make sense of them.  He can't even quite remember what it felt like--it's like a dream, intense but distant.  His mind still feels all...opened up, weirdly vulnerable, used in a way he doesn't really have words for.  It's not bad, it's just...like the ache after a good workout.  It's...good.  Weird, but good.

...And also, he's  _starving._   Whatever weird brain stuff is going on, they can handle it later, Mike decides, and hops up off the bed.  Time for breakfast.

Thunder is sitting up on the couch when Mike comes out, goggles on, leaning over something at the wobbly coffee table.  Mike can’t see what exactly he’s doing, but it looks like maybe he’s doing maintenance on all the gadgets Mike brought with them.  He doesn’t seem to notice when Mike comes out; he's focusing so hard his nose is almost touching whatever he's working on, poking at tiny pieces of metal with equally tiny tools.

“...So,” says Mike.

Thunder squeaks and jumps, whipping around, a bright spark of white-blue shock.  “Oh!  I—hi!  Good morning!”

“Morning!”  Mike stretches—he smells pretty bad, dang.  He’s gonna definitely need to shower.  “I’m making breakfast.  Uh…you want anything?  And, I mean, if you wanna shower or something.  Mi casa is your casa.”

Thunder winces and grins at the terrible mock-Spanish, then winces again and reaches up to his face.  His split lip has swelled up pretty impressively, and his cheek and left eye are swollen and bruised purple-black.  Dang, yeah, no wonder he’s sore.  Red’s hits hurt even through the mask and the body-armor, Mike’s never been tied up and backhanded across his bare face.  Mike’s surprised there’s no gash on his cheekbone—Thunder must have turned with the blow and minimized the damage.  Quick thinking.

“…what have you got?”

“Eggs.”  Mike elbows the door of his fridge open and looks around.  “…Uh…I could make pancakes.  Or waffles?  I’m outta bacon, but I can make omelets.”  Thunder’s stomach growls audibly.  Mike grins and guesses, “…or I could make some of everything.”

Thunder’s face tells him everything he needs to know.  Mike laughs and starts pulling things out of the fridge, setting them out on the counter. 

“You should go take a shower,” he says.  “Do you…y’know, do you live close by?”

“Uh…”  Thunder is studiously not looking at him.  “…No.” That’s all he gives, no further explanation.  Which...

…Well, Mike knew it wasn’t really  _normal_ to know somebody’s secret identity, to know where they live like he does with J—with Ninelives and Whiptail—and he doesn’t even know where Texas lives yet!  So that’s…okay.  That’s fine.  He shrugs that off. 

“You can borrow some clothes then,” he says, and cracks some eggs.  These aren’t his usual brand—Julie must have busted in and done her weird reverse-theft thing where she leaves Mike stuff like food and soap and detergent, kinda pointedly.  Which is fair enough, Mike supposes.  Shopping isn’t exactly high up on his list of priorities, and his apartment does get kinda…ripe. 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah, totally!”  Mike chops an onion, squinting as his eyes burn.  “Bedroom’s through there, you can grab whatever clothes you want except my jacket.  Bathroom’s right off the bedroom!”

“O-oh!”  There’s a startled kind of bright-blue thread behind the word, but Thunder does push himself up, wincing, and limp towards the bedroom.  “Now?  Uh—yeah, okay!”

He showers while Mike is cooking.  It’s distracting, being this close—Mike keeps shifting his weight and shivering at the sudden feeling of air on bare skin that isn’t really bared.  When he shakes his head he can almost feel water scatter off his hair, trickle down his back.  He tries really hard not to think about it too much, that the guy is naked a couple rooms away.  In his house, now, for the first time ever.  Face to face and within arm’s reach for the first time ever.  He’s been waiting for the day he meets his distant partner for a long time now.  He wasn’t expecting to be this…nervous.

Nerves or not, Mike manages to get two huge omelets, a stack of pancakes and a waffle cooked by the time Thunder comes edging out of his bedroom in one of Mike’s T-shirts and his own pair of ripped, dirty jeans.  Mike’s not surprised—now that he sees Thunder in one of Mike’s shirts, it's pretty obvious the guy would have to put some new holes in Mike’s belts to make the jeans stay on.  Thunder's tall and broad across the shoulders, but geez he’s  _thin._

Mike shovels another pancake onto his plate.

“I’m gonna go get cleaned up,” he says, and pulls out a chair meaningfully, arraying the plates of breakfast food in front of it.  “Take whatever you want, dude, there’s plenty.  Be right back.”

He can feel Thunder’s surprise— _he’s going to leave me alone in his house?_   He grins at him, just to reassure, and then ducks into his room and heads for the shower. 

All other extenuating circumstances aside, it’s  _great_ to finally be clean.  Mike scrubs up, washes his hair for the first time in a while, and actually even remembers to grab a razor and shave.  The face that looks back out of the bathroom mirror at him is familiar—golden-brown skin, sharp cheekbones, beaky nose—but the expression isn’t.  He looks nervous, and it’s weird.  Mike slaps himself firmly on the cheeks a couple of times, scrubs his face with a towel, and then turns the water off and goes to find the cleanest clothes he’s got.

Thunder is sitting in front of an empty plate when he comes out—Mike blinks, confused, and then catches the longing look Thunder throws at a plate of waffles and grins.

“I made all that food so you could eat it, y’know,” he says.  “You look like you could use it.”  And maybe that was the wrong thing to say, it makes Thunder sink in his chair a little bit—Mike rushes on.  “—I mean, you deserve a real breakfast after a night like last night.  So go on, dude, eat!”

Thunder chews his lip for one more conflicted second, and then gives in and reaches out, shoveling more food onto his plate.  He eats like he’s starving, and it’s kinda sad but also kinda cute.  Especially since every couple of bites he stops, makes a kind of pained little _god that’s so tasty_ moaning noise in his chest, and then keeps eating.  Mike piles more food on Thunder’s plate, sits down and pulls his own plate over to dig into his breakfast. 

Thunder finally slows down after the third plate, and he's still picking over his leftover eggs when Mike clears the plates away and throws them in the sink.  He can taste/feel the sense of fullness and satisfaction, and it's happy and warm and  _great._ Mike leans back against the sink, eyes half-closing, enjoying the feeling.

And then, abruptly, a pang of secondhand pain interrupts his enjoyment.  Mike blinks, frowns, and then realizes Thunder is absentmindedly rubbing at his bruised face, wiping his split lip.

“Your face looks awful,” says Mike, and then, realizing his mistake as a jolt of secondhand surprise and embarrassment shocks through him, “—no the _bruises_ , dude, come on.”

“Oh.”  Thunder relaxes.  “Oh, yeah.”  He pokes at his puffy face.  “I don’t, uh…get punched a lot.  Is there some kinda way you, y’know…keep them from looking all…?”

“Ice helps.”  Mike grins and pulls a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer, tossing it—Thunder yelps and reaches up just in time to grab them out of the air.  “…but I also have a friend who can help you out.  He left me some presents that’ll clean those up for you.”

“He’s, uh…gifted?”

“Oh yeah!”  Mike roots around in the freezer, looking for Whiptail’s gifts—he pulls out a packet, pops a pill loose and brings it over.  “—Never asked how he got that way, but he’s got some, uh…talents, for sure.  Here, just take it whole.”

“What is it?”  Thunder turns it over in his fingers, dubious, cautious.  Well, Mike can respect that.  What kind of superhero just swallows something without checking first?

“He says it’s, um…”  Mike shoves the pack back in the freezer, trying to remember.  “…’short-acting, set-expiration nano-bots’.  It’s not a cure but it’s a pick-me-up.  It’ll put you…two, three days further ahead than you would be without it.”

“Nanos?”  Thunder sits up straighter, obviously interested, turning the capsule over in his fingers.  “So—wait, so when you say ‘a friend’…are these Whiptail’s?”

“You know Whip?”  Mike grins.  “He’s cool, huh?”

“He’s a good guy.”  Thunder relaxes a little, gives the pill one last cautious look and then pops it into his mouth and swallows it dry.  Mike, who’d been about to offer him a glass of tap water, blinks and then offers it anyway and watches Thunder do the same routine he did last night.  Reach out, remember, flinch back and pull on a glove.  After the experience last night when they finally made skin-to-skin contact, Mike doesn’t really blame him.  Some part of him still sighs mournfully as Thunder reaches out with his gloved hand and takes the cup carefully.

“You’re really bright.”

Mike blinks and looks up—Thunder is watching him, unreadable behind his long hair and goggles.    He must have caught that sigh, and probably some of the disappointment that went with it.  Dammit.  “Huh?” says Mike, but he knows his incomprehension isn’t very convincing.

“I’m just…”  Thunder sighs.   _I’m trying to explain_.  The guilt he felt when he flinched away from Mike last night bubbles back to the surface of their bond—he wants Mike to understand.  To know it’s not his fault.

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, buddy,” says Mike.  Thunder glances up at him and then pulls his goggles up and squints at him.

 _So you were faking the look on your face when I flinched?_ Oh.  Mike hadn’t realized just how hurt his own expression had been, last night.  The memory of it is tinged with more of that guilt.  Thunder’s regret for making him feel bad.   _I could feel it hurting your feelings that I didn’t want to touch you_.

“You don’t have to touch anybody you don’t want—”

“You’re already brighter than anybody I’ve ever met,” Thunder says, cutting over him.  He raises a hand when Mike stares at him, confused; taps his own temple.  “—in here.  Y’know?  Even before we went in that stupid church and you touched a _cursed—_ ” he stops, huffs, starts again.  “…I could feel you from a mile away.  Even back before that first job, you were really bright and… _loud._   And then we…” he waves a hand, lost for words, but Mike doesn’t need a reminder.  That first moment of blinding clarity, of  _connection,_  is still fresh in both their minds.  He can feel it.

“I thought you couldn’t get any brighter,” says Thunder, and runs a thumb over his knuckles.  It isn’t until Mike feels the echo back he realizes his right hand is bruised, knuckles raw.  Thunder winces like he can feel Mike’s awareness of the torn skin.  Stops touching his own red, cracked knuckles and flattens his hands on the tabletop instead.  “But you did, and now I can hear you, just, all the time, and I didn’t know how to undo it and it was  _my power_  that did this, so.  So!  I tried to stay out of your way.  I’ve been gifted for as long as I can remember and I’ve _never_ felt anything like last night, dude, you’re _so bright._ ”

“That’s why you never got near me again?”  Mike almost laughs, but Thunder looks miserable, hunched in on himself.  “…hey.  Listen, buddy, I…I like being connected like this.  I kept wanting to come find you, but whenever I tried to ask you freaked out!  I didn’t wanna push.”

“And now you’re right here,” says Thunder, and he reaches up and hooks his fingers under the straps of his goggles to pull them off completely.  When he looks up at Mike this time his eyes are bright, brilliant sky-blue, lit up from the inside, and there’s a look on his face that’s hard to read—despairing, or in awe, or maybe just sad.  “Dude, I know you felt _something_ when—l-last night—but you seriously have no idea.  I mean you don’t, you can’t, you _can’t_ get it, your brain isn’t made that way, it was…it was just…”

He mouths silently for a second, trying for words, and then groans in frustration and stops trying.  The moment comes back, rushing sudden and vivid into Mike’s head.  Mike feels himself sway as it hits, and then gasp in a breath as he _remembers._ He remembers how it feels to be not himself, tall and cold and skinny and bruised.  Even in a memory, every sense feels turned up to eleven, too much to fit into one mind.  And all around him there’s the pull, familiar and not quite too much.  The racing, thrumming maelstrom of other peoples’ thoughts, battering at Thunder’s senses, trying to catch hold of him. 

…And he can feel Mike.  Can feel him like a bright, racing heartbeat, a central pulse that all the other minds in the area revolve around.  Everybody else buffets him back and forth, snapshots of strangers’ grief, happiness, curiosity, anger, and in the middle of it all Mike’s presence sits, solid and constant, new but familiar.  Thunder’s always keeping a hold of himself in a way Mike can’t really wrap his mind around—but it’s almost like the feeling of balancing on the edge of a rooftop, looking down into the open darkness below him.

Mike had touched his arm, and that had been everything. 

Nothing else had even been audible anymore; the murmurs, the pull from every direction inside his head, nothing.  Silence, except for the vivid, unfurling kaleidoscope of Mike’s mind, the brightness of it like blurs of neon.  Mike through his own eyes is a tired face in a mirror, not bad but nothing special—through Thunder’s mind he’s gold, green, every possible color in shades brighter and richer than anything his eyesight has to offer.  Thunder had _gone under,_ when Mike had touched him.  He’d stopped breathing, he’d stopped seeing, he’d lost track of where his mind was, where their skin touched, where he stopped and Mike started.  He’d just felt.

Mike opens his eyes and realizes he’s leaning back against the counter, breathing slow and deep, lost in just the memory of the feeling.  It had been intense for him, sure, but nothing like that.  Nothing has ever felt like that.  Mike’s whole brain feels like the sound his ears made after that time he took a stun grenade in the face, except nothing hurts.

Thunder is watching him, sinking back into his own skull, dimming behind Mike’s eyes like fading sunspots. 

“…wow,” says Mike, and he sounds hoarse and strange to his own ears.  “I…wow.”

“Yeah.”  Thunder looks down again.  “So.  Yeah, so anyway, that’s…I thought you oughta know.  It’s not you, I don’t mind touching—I mean, I don’t  _not_ want to touch—oh my god.”

His entire face is going brilliantly red, which is really distractingly funny and cute and that’s probably why it takes Mike a solid fifteen seconds to feel the rushing, anxious pink static under his thoughts and remember where he’s felt it before.  Last night, when they touched skin-on-skin, he felt that same anxious, eager nervousness,  _he’ll see you he’ll see me gross weird stupid hide hide HIDE don’t let him see_

Thunder hears him remember what he heard last night, hears him start to put two and two together—he’s already starting to push himself up when it clicks into place, already grabbing his stuff when Mike starts to say “…oh, buddy…”

“I won’t bother you again,” says Thunder, choked and scared and  _hurting_.  “I—I promise, I know it’s gross I—didn’t want you to see— _shit—_ ”

“Hey!”  Mike half-dives across his apartment as Thunder starts toward the door, shoulders slumped, head low, releasing waves of nothing but self-loathing, disgust, fear, humiliation.  “Hey, no, don’t go.  Dude, please don’t go.  It’s seriously okay!”

 _It’s not okay,_ Thunder thinks, bitter and humiliated, and flinches as Mike starts to reach out, trying to catch his shoulder.  “Don’t—no, don’t!  Don’t touch me!”

Mike steps back, hands raised.  “It’s okay,” he says again, almost helplessly.  “I’m not… _mad,_ I’m not upset or anything, I just…I didn’t think…”  _You can see me, the way I am,_  his mind offers, while his stupid mouth stumbles on empty words, and Thunder goes still and half-turns, looking back at him with round, startled eyes.   _You can see me, what I am, what I’ve done, and you still wanna actually be near me?  I hurt people, you know I did. You saw what a screw-up I am I’m trying but I’m such a screw-up—_

“You’re—the best person I’ve ever known,” says Thunder numbly.  “—no—no, no no, don’t...”  _don’t think that, don’t feel like that, it’s wrong, you shouldn’t feel like that when you’re so bright and good_

And he  _means_  that and something heavy and aching has taken up residence in Mike’s chest, pressing down hard on his lungs.  He’s kept it so neatly locked away in his mind, but it slips out now, in twinges and flashes—Kane’s smile, the weight of his hand on Mike’s shoulder, the joy that had swelled up in Mike’s chest when he said  _I chose you._ When he said  _I’m proud of you_.  How much he gave up, to feel worthy of that pride, that trust.  How much it had hurt.  How hard he’d fallen when he realized the truth. 

He doesn’t see Thunder come closer so much as he feels him—feels him get brighter, feels him worry, the pain he’s feeling for Mike’s mistakes, feels him want to put a hand on Mike’s shoulder and how he doubts that it’s wanted.

 _Please,_  Mike tries not to think, tries  _so hard_  not to think.   _Please_  because even around the others he doesn’t let himself think about it (about  _him,_ about that warm, rough voice saying _I trust you, Mike, I know you’re going to make me proud_ ), and now that he’s let himself start hurting he doesn’t know how to stop.

When Thunder touches his face, it’s like being wrapped up in sunlight, eased under cool, clear water. 

Mike opens his eyes, looks up—some part of him sees Thunder’s face, eyes lit up with that unearthly blue, but most of him is spellbound by the sudden connection.  It’s not a wide-open flood like it was last night—it’s still open, thoughts and feelings laid out like words on a page, but it’s not frenzied, now.  Thunder closes his eyes and breathes in shakily through his nose, and the calm floods both of them as he makes his tense shoulders relax, forces his lungs to hold the air for a long count and then slowly, slowly let it back out. 

As the hurt starts to fade, Thunder’s thoughts start to blur gently into his, mixing softly at the edges.  Mike’s eyes fall shut without his consent, the tension in his shoulders goes slack.  Having everything laid bare like this, letting the connection flow, letting somebody he trusts slowly ease him open and willing, it feels so…

Thunder yelps and jerks his hand away.  Mike barely has time to think about where his mind had just started to go before he’s babbling apologies, cheeks hot.  Thunder is turning scarlet from the tips of his ears to his shoulders, and he doesn’t seem to be capable of making words—his brain is one enormous hot cloud of foggy embarrassment and shock and… _want_.

Mike’s not sure which one of them kisses the other one first, but it doesn’t really matter.  It’s just a clumsy peck at first, but every time their lips brush carefully there’s another flash of sensation and emotion, from the sharp shock of  _oh his lips are so warm_  to  _what if he doesn’t like_ and then the third time  _oh god he’s going to know how long it’s been since you kissed somebody you loser_.

Mike breaks back with a startled laugh.  “—chill, bro,” he says, amused, and Thunder blinks and then seems to realize what Mike is talking about—what he overheard.  Embarrassment rises back up in his mind in a great, blurry red fog.  “…so how long _has_ it been?  ‘Cause you’re doing _really_ good for somebody out of practice.”

Thunder goes absolutely scarlet and sputters.  Mike leans forward and kisses him again, taking advantage of his stammering to swipe the tip of his tongue past Thunder’s lips and feel him shudder all over. 

_I just want you to like this I need you to like me, I want you to feel good—_

_That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever not heard somebody say,_  Mike thinks, relishing the way the thought goes straight from one mind to the other—Thunder smiles back at him, but it’s small and pained and…. oh, Mike can hear something old and painful go through his mind, catching on old, jagged scars that haven’t really healed.  _I need you to like me_ because last time…didn’t go too well.  It’s more impression and sensation than memory, but impression is enough—assumptions and misunderstandings and awkward denials and a kiss he didn’t want and…geez, and a screaming fight afterwards, _how else was I supposed to shut you up—_

“Whoa,” says Mike, and Thunder jumps a little bit as Mike squeezes his shoulders, shaking him out of the anxious spiral of thoughts that’s taking over his brain.  “Hey, don’t worry about that—jerk, whoever that was, don’t worry about them.  Okay?  They’re not here.  Uh…do you need me not to--?”

“No!” says Thunder, startled and unhappy, “—no, that was—a long time ago, I’m not—” His hands clench on Mike’s arms, holding him there.  _This time I do this time I_ definitely  _do I really do want this I swear. It was okay, I’m fine I want you_

 _I believe you._ And underneath that, deeper and hungrier,  _I can feel that, I can feel you wanting me._ It’s an intoxicating feeling, being wanted,  _knowing_ the other person wants this as bad as you do.  Mike kisses him again and again and again and doesn’t think about how when they touch and pull apart, touch and pull apart he can feel Thunder’s mind in his, deeper every time, opening his thoughts up wide, laying them bare—

“Oh my god,” says Thunder.   _Is he…_   “Are you _getting off_ on this?”

He can’t even bring himself to be embarrassed by how much he absolutely is. 

 _Definitely_.  And then, because there’s no filter mind-to-mind, his brain decides to helpfully throw out,  _it’s like you’re making love to me, but with your brain.  And I_ really  _like a challenge and I can tell you’re not even trying yet and it’s already pushing me so hard your brain is a_ powerhouse  _of course I’m getting off on this._

Thunder makes a squeaky noise that sounds kind of like he just got punched in the gut, and then blinks and then laughs, sudden and startled and open in a way he wasn’t before.  “Did you just think the words  _making love_  at me?  Geez, you enormous _dork_.”

Mike blinks.  “What’s wrong…with…” it’s so hard to focus on his body and force his mouth to make words.  “ _Nnnh_ ,” is all he manages after that—Thunder leans in and kisses him again, bending over to reach his mouth, broadcasting a long, slow ache of deep red  _want you want you want you_.  Mike has gotten twinges of that feeling before, but they always vanished as soon as he tried to reach out.  He thought he was imagining it, but now he’s feeling it for real he knows better.  Their connection isn’t as transparent as he thought.  His buddy’s been hiding some stuff from him. 

 _What was I supposed to do,_  Thunder asks, annoyed and embarrassed and completely distracted.  Mike can echo-feel his own skin—it feels so warm and smooth and staggeringly  _alive_.  Thunder doesn’t touch people much.  Not just that he hasn’t touched anybody like this, but he hasn’t touched anybody at all _._ Not with his bare skin, not more than in passing, not for a long, long time.  There’s a distant memory of…what, nervous hand-holding, a long-ago conflicted memory of cautious, experimental touches, but touching is so  _much._ It’s been years.  Mike’s heart aches abruptly.   _Was I supposed to just broadcast across the city every time I—_

He tries to cut that thought off, but not before Mike gets a glimpse of  _exactly_  what he’s been doing that he’s been so careful not to broadcast.  His eyebrows rise.   _Whoa._

“Shutupshutupshutup—” _shut your stupid mouth agh don’t look at those memories seriously oh my god_

 _I’m not trying to_!  They just keep pushing up to meet him as Thunder remembers them, out of control.  He’s trying not to think about them but every time he remembers something else he needs to avoid remembering Mike gets a flash of it, sudden and intense.  A momentary glimpse of that first night they met—his own back from across the dark churchyard, the breadth of his shoulders and the cut of his waist seen through somebody else’s eyes in a way Mike never looked at himself before.  The instant twinge of reluctant interest.  The fantasies that came after that; Mike’s face, his arms, muscles under his skin. About how warm his hands would be, strong and rough with callouses.  How he would pin Thunder down with a soft, wicked grin, everything going golden and peaceful, a slow, hungry ache of satisfaction—

_Wow.  I’m pretty sure I’m not actually that hot, but uh…thanks!_

_I said don’t look!_   It feels like a slap inside his brain, panicky and flustered, a bright shock of white reproach— through the connection Thunder is flatlining pure embarrassment, his thoughts are all thrown out of order by an endless refrain of  _oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god_  and a tidal wave of hazy red embarrassment.  He pulls his hands away, breaks contact and buries his face in his hands again.

It’s easier to think when they’re not touching, but it’s also weirdly cold and empty now.  Lonely.  Mike blinks a few times, trying to remember how to move, and then reaches out and carefully pats Thunder on the arm, avoiding his bare forearms.  “…hey.”

“ _Don’t look at me,_ ” says Thunder, wobbly and horrified.  “Jesus, I am  _so sorry—_ ”

“You kidding me?”  Mike gives his shoulder a squeeze, comforting.  “You’ve got a head start.  I kinda…well I wanted to, but I didn’t know what you looked like.”

Thunder looks up really slowly, mouth open.

_You wanted…?_

“Yeah?”  And he really doesn’t mean to let it boil over, the memory of touching himself with an arm thrown over his eyes, imagining someone whose face he doesn’t know, the presence in his head…

Thunder huddles in on himself and makes a squeaky noise of pure embarrassment.   _Stoppit!  Oh my god._

“But now I know what you look like,” says Mike.  “Uh—I mean, unless that’s not cool.”

“Ha!  Haha.”  Thunder covers his face with both hands, takes a deep breath and drags them down with a long, shaky sigh.  “Sure!  Fine, cool, yeah, that’s—totally a reasonable thing somebody would want to do, my stupid face is totally jerking-off material—”

“I mean—yeah?”  Mike backs across the room and settles on his couch, coaxing Thunder down with him, pressing up against his side to get his lips on that pale, freckled throat.  Thunder makes a shivering sound and jerks, arching up into the touch, dropping his head back. Mike has to stop and breathe, eyes squeezed shut, just…breathing.  Letting that noise replay in his head until he can move without moaning back.  _You’re sexy as heck, bro.  Just_ look  _at you, geez.  Just_ listen _to you, you sound amazing._

The flustered embarrassment that pours out of Thunder’s brain is almost overwhelming.  It’s also really really cute, because apparently Blonde Thunder, psychic mastermind, certified genius, gets really high-pitched and squawky and incoherent the more embarrassed he gets.

“Stop thinking I’m cute!”

Mike snorts into the side of his neck and pulls him around, half sitting on Mike’s lap so Mike can get two big handfuls of his butt—Thunder squeaks, startled, and it’s  _adorable._

_Yeah, no.  Can’t.  Too cute._

_“_ I’m a—dammit I’m a grown man, you asshole, I’m not cute!”

 _You’re freaking adorable._   It turns out an unforeseen bonus of making out with a psychic—telepath, oops—is that he doesn’t have to stop kissing the freckles on the side of Thunder’s neck to keep talking.   _And smart and hot and brave and—_

Something dark and painful slices through him like a knife.  Mike jerks back, startled, and Thunder laughs—it’s not a nice noise, bitter and tight. “ _Brave?_ ”  A memory snaps through his mind, sharp and vivid and acidic; waking up, trying to move, feeling the ropes around his wrists and ankles, the sudden fear, the way his breath started to come in gasps and his eyes started to burn when Red stepped out of the shadows playing that crooked, vivid-red lightning around his fingers.   _What kind of_ hero _starts crying as soon as he gets caught by a villain?_

 _The kind that knows how dangerous this job is and does it anyway?_   Mike knows something bad could happen to him, is always aware his job is dangerous, but whatever happens he’s got powers and talents to deal with it.   _You’re going out there with nothing but stuff you made and—dude, your powers are great but they’re not really fighting powers.  And you still kept telling me to save myself._   Like he ever would, when he could feel that much terror behind the words.  Like he’d ever abandon his partner.   _Don’t do that again, okay?  If I need to pick up help on the way I’ll get somebody—_ Ninelives, Stronghorn, Whiptail, he’s got friends, and that means Thunder has friends.  People that’ll help keep him safe.   _I’m never_ not _going to come find you when you need help._

Thunder stares at him for a second, and then slowly crumples back, pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.  Mike leans over, head on one side to catch the faintest flicker of a blue glow from under the shadows of Thunder’s hair.

“…okay, dude?”

 “Okay.”  He sniffs hard, tugs his goggles off and scrubs quickly at his face under his hair.  “Y-yeah.  Okay.”

“Cool.”  Mike sits back as Thunder unravels a little bit from his miserable, curled-up slump—the mood they had going is pretty much gone, and they’re not a burning circuit, they’re not two minds burning and melting together at the edges, they’re two awkward guys sitting on a couch in a crappy apartment.  So…now what the heck are they supposed to do?  Did that mess everything up?  Are they still making out or are they done for the day?

_I don’t know dude, but if you’re good to keep going, I’m good too._

There’s silence for a second, and then Thunder blinks and covers his face with his hands, obviously mortified.  “Oh, shit,” he says through his fingers, “—you weren’t asking me, were you?  I’m, uh…I’m good with…with whatever you want, but you were totally not asking me, sorry that was such a dick move, I didn’t mean to spy on—”

Superpowers are ridiculous.  Mike crumples over to rest his forehead on Thunder’s shoulder and breaks down laughing.   _It’s cool it’s fine dude we’re good.  I don’t know what I want though, I just…_

“…I can look.”

Mike’s laughter trails off and he looks up, surprised; Thunder has turned in his seat, kneeling up on the couch cushions to look down at Mike.  Even in the dim golden sunlight filtering in through the blinds, his eyes are visibly glowing.  They’re so  _bright_ , brighter than they look and vivid blue and as he looks at Mike that glow brightens sharply to a shivering pulse of light that seems to cut right through to the inside of his skull.

“I can look,” he says again, “—inside your head, and see what you want.  I mean, if you want…me to do that…?”

“Dude, you can hear this, right?” the adrenaline is starting to hum in the back of his skull, the excitement and the interest, he can almost see/feel/hear them like they would be from the outside, all shivering tension and hot red-orange-gold anticipation.  “You gotta know what I’m gonna say.”

He leans in and grabs Thunder’s hand—Thunder jerks all over and gasps sharply and then relaxes slowly, leaning in like he’s listening to something, lips parting slightly. 

“…why are you…thinking about jumping off buildings?”

“I am?”  He’s definitely done it plenty of times before—and it’s great, free-falling like that, it’s a heck of a rush—but he didn’t notice himself thinking about it.

“I mean, yeah, like.” Thunder squints at him.  “Are you…what is that?  Excited?  You’re thinking about me and it feels like jumping off buildings and…winning fights and…” His eyes are falling shut as he reaches further with his mind, pressing cautiously deeper into Mike’s thoughts, turning things over, listening. 

 _Is this okay?_ He feels…confused.  Confused, but interested, like Mike is something strange he’s never seen before.   _Most people start fighting me when I have to dig into them like this.  Trying to push me out._

_I’m fine I’m good I can take it I can handle this wow—_

He’s far enough gone he can’t tell if he actually sees the trepidation on Thunder’s face, his lip pinned in his teeth, or if he just feels it in his mind.  But a second later it doesn’t matter either way because a second later he  _pushes,_  opens Mike up deeper, digs down into him.  One second they’re sitting next to each other on the couch, inches apart, close but separate, and the next Thunder is opening him up, easing deeper and deeper, into Mike’s skull, into every inch of his body.  Mike’s heart is pounding, the throb of adrenaline lights them up.  Thunder peels away resistance, slips past lies and defenses, lays him out bare.  No bravado, no excuses.  Just what he wants, clear and plain.  Mike’s powers burn between them, white-hot, feeding them both power; Thunder pushes again with new strength, opens up thoughts and feelings with surgical precision and drags up memories, fantasies, the best things Mike’s ever felt all laid out to see.

Distantly, Mike feels his body shake—knows there’s a mouth on his when it cuts off the endless stream of mangled, breathless words coming out of him.  Time blurs, the same way it does when he’s pushing his body as far as it can go, when he’s in the middle of a fight.  His brain can’t keep up with what’s happening to it, can’t handle going any further but he  _can,_ he can take it all, anything, he could swallow the sun right now—

 _Is this what you want?_  Whispers Thunder’s voice to every scrap of his scattered mind at once, and Mike barely registers somebody’s touching his body, far away out in the real world, before he comes hard and utterly unexpected with a sharp gasp he’s barely in his body to hear. 

\--

The darkness after Mike touches the skull is absolute.  He wakes up drifting in the dark, with nothing around him as far as he can see—he can just about make out the shape of his own body, very dimly, but other than that there’s nothing around him but emptiness.  There’s something hard pressing against his cheekbones, like his mask but smoother and heavier.

Mike reaches up and traces the contours of the silver skull he’d touched in the church, fitted perfectly to the lines of his face.  It’s not strapped on or anything, but it resists when he tries to pull it off and it doesn’t shift when he moves.  The metal around the eye sockets feels hot, like there’s some kind of fire inside.

_Are you finally awake?_

It just sounds like a voice in his head for a second, but the voice isn’t familiar and the question is so out of left field Mike jumps a little.

 _No you asshole I’m not a voice in your head I’m a voice in_ my  _head.  Telepath?  Got dragged in with you?  Ringing any bells?_  

Oh.   _Oh!_   Blonde Thunder.

_It’s just Thunder._

Right, that’s a nickname.  Okay.  Well, whatever his name is it sounds like he’s pretty mad. 

Man, it’s really weird in here.  Not hot, not cold, nothing solid anywhere—it doesn’t feel real.  More like a dream.  Mike pinches his own arm idly, then frowns and digs a thumbnail into the bed of one of his other fingernails.  Nothing.  No pain.

 _Of course I’m mad,_  Thunder’s thoughts come out of the darkness,  _you touched the artifact, you got us trapped in here!_

“Yeah, but I’m gonna get us back out, though!”  He protests a second late, distracted—it comes out in garbled, eldritch noise, but apparently Thunder picks up the thoughts from his brain.  Somewhere in the darkness, he snorts and mutters something derisive and inaudible.  Mike pulls out his pocket-knife and cautiously makes a shallow slice across his forearm.  The skin heals seamlessly back behind the blade.

 _What are you gonna do, tough guy?  You can’t fight freakin’…_ endless darkness!

“This isn’t my body.”

Silence.  Then, “What?” asks Thunder, brain and voice at the same time, a perfect question mark in Mike’s head.   _What are you talking about, ‘body’?_

“I mean, when I hurt myself it doesn’t hurt and it heals back up again.  Like a dream.”

There’s a long, silent pause.

 _…like a dream._   Thunder’s thoughts feel interested, distant like he’s thinking more to himself than in Mike’s direction.   _Huh._

“And you’re psychic.”

 _Telepathic._   A sharp little red swell of annoyance behind the words—he likes to be accurate.

“Telepathic, okay—brains are your  _thing!_   And boosting powers is my thing.”

_You think you can amp me up enough to break through this?_

“Can’t hurt to try.”  Mike flails for a little while, getting nowhere, and then closes his eyes and  _thinks_  himself forward.  It seems to work; there’s no sign of movement in here, no wind to brush his face, but the faint throb of Thunder’s guarded thoughts gets louder in his brain.  “Where are you?”

“What?  Why?”  Thunder says, startled.  He loses control for a second—the swell of trepidation is a splash of distant neon blue behind Mike’s eyes.  He doesn’t like being touched.  He doesn’t like people getting close to him without permission.  Mike stops pushing himself forward. 

“Because my powers work best when I’m closer?”

_Not too close don’t touch don’t touch don’t touch—_

“I know you’re picking up on me,” says Thunder, shaky but with dignity.  “—You know I don’t like this.”

“Yeah, but how else do you figure we’re going to get out?”

Grudging agreement, understanding of the point, echoes back to him.

“I have to be close now,” says Mike, and reaches out.  “—here, take my hand—”

\--

Thunder’s hands are cool, even with the brilliant blush spread across his cheeks and down his neck—long-fingered and thin and cool.  Big and awkward and knuckly, fisted in the front of Mike’s shirt.  His throat works around a choked noise as Mike threads their fingers together—his thoughts open up again, clear and visible.

“You okay?”

He gets a bleary sense of acknowledgement back—Thunder feels rattled, shaken loose. He wasn’t expecting that much feedback, so abruptly and so intensely, he was doing such a good job keeping himself focused and then Mike whited out and dropped like a rock and dragged Thunder right down with him.  Mike’s the one who actually got off, but he’s not the one breathing like he just ran a marathon.

 “Hey,” says Mike, and pushes blearily at his shoulder.  “Hey, come on buddy.  You with me?”

Thunder jumps and drags himself painfully back into his own head.  Some of him refocuses, his mind gathers back together again from fog to distinct thoughts, forming its crisp layers again.  It’s not as neat in there anymore.  He’s trying to hold himself together, but pangs of attraction and disbelief and wonder and  _want_  keep forcing through, sending worn-out little shivers up Mike’s back. 

Mike’s not wearing his shirt.  He didn’t feel hands unzipping his jeans, didn’t feel any of it, but he feels…wow.  Dang.  It feels kinda stupid to think it, but he feels kind of sexy like this?  Laid out on his couch with no shirt and his jeans all messed up.  It’s muted, now, but he can still feel Thunder _wanting_ him, looking at him, wanting to do things with him. 

“…agh,” says Thunder blearily, and grabs a rag out of his backpack, scrubbing at one sticky hand with it.  Moving makes him shiver—he falls back and to one side a little, pressed up against Mike’s side on the couch, still taking those shuddering breaths. His bare hand is resting on Mike’s stomach, he’s flushed scarlet and he…he wants…

 _Oh._   He hasn’t gotten off yet.  Well what the heck is he waiting for?  Mike lets out a breathless laugh, panting and flustered and so very, impossibly happy, and leans over to kiss messily at the side of Thunder’s throat, at his ear and jaw.  “… _hey,_ ” he says, so close he feels his lips brush soft skin, “… _need some help with that?_ ”

Thunder makes a high, strangled noise and pulls his knees up to his chest.  “—h-help with what?  Haha—”

“Dude,” says Mike, amused and a little bit impatient both at the same time.  “Even if I wasn’t in your brain, that’s pretty weak.”

Thunder slowly unravels, legs dropping—god, his jeans are so  _tight_.  Plenty tight even before all of… _this_ , but now they look like they might be actually painful.   _Oh god yes they are please_  Thunder’s brain echoes faintly back at him, before he can close it off. 

“So,” Mike repeats, and leans in to kiss him properly, still shaky and full of light.  “…need some help with that?”

“ _Oh,_ ” says Thunder, and his brain goes rushing on without him, a breathless rush of _but you already finished you’re already done (I missed my chance it’s fine don’t push yourself don’t feel obligated—)  you don’t think I look—don’t think I’m being…?_

There isn’t even a real shape to that thought, just amorphous worry.  _Please don’t think I’m being_ …and then so many things, _greedy stupid needy girly lame gross slutty clingy pathetic—_ all rolled up into one huge, spinning mess of uncertainty.

 _I think you’ re_ great  _and anybody who ever told you anything different is full of bull,_  thinks Mike fiercely, and kisses him before he can argue, urgent and forceful and too fast like he does everything else.  When he gets himself pushed up again and reaches over for the fly of Thunder’s jeans, thin, cool hands grab his shoulders so hard it almost hurts, pulling him closer as he closes his eyes and goes by feeling instead. 

He can feel the echoes of his own touch as he works the zip open, as the clear, careful layers of thought Thunder’s managed to marshal fall apart again in gasping shreds.  Underneath the logical thought and the worry, there’s base instinct and sensation that rushes like a bottomless, overpowering river, tearing away at rational thought, breath-taking in their intensity.   _Oh god oh god oh god_ , Thunder’s mind whimpers, faster than words ever could, a constant stream of fear and amazement and want.   _Please yes please oh please_ and an abrupt swell of pleasure, like red-hot fog.   _Harder faster more_

“ _Wow,_ ” says Mike’s body, and  _wow you look amazing you sound amazing why did this take us so long_  his brain spills out, without control or restraint.  Thunder shudders, dazed and limp, eyes open but watching nothing but the hum and swirl of color and emotion flowing too fast to follow between their minds.   _You’re so helpless right now, you’re letting me take you apart but I’m here I’m here I’ll protect you you’re safe nobody’s gonna hurt you—_

 _Oh,_  says Thunder again, and closes his eyes, those amazing, sky-blue eyes full of light from the inside.   _Oh fuck please don’t stop it feels so nice_  and he’s not thinking about the way Mike touches him, he’s thinking about the rush of Mike’s thoughts and feelings, about the protectiveness and want.  It reverberates back to him, and it feels like a tight, hard hug, too long and hard to breathe, it feels like something so hot and perfect it burns all the way down.  The pleasure from his body is a second, sweet counterpoint, playing in and out of the flood of love and need.

He’s beautiful.  Mike wants to feel him come.

Thunder takes a sharp breath as the thought washes over him, the lust burns at his skin and the answering swell of  _need_  pounds up to meet it.  Would he scream, would he white out, would he thrash and moan like he is now, shuddering and sweat-soaked and blown halfway out of his head—

 _Please gentle please_ not yet  _please a little bit longer it’s too much holy_ shit _you’re like a thunderstorm inside my head please—_

 _It wouldn’t have to end._   Mike kisses him again, and he wants this so much right now, losing control to a familiar wild, burning affection, his powers giving and feeding in a tight, white-hot circuit between them— _I could do this for you forever as many times as you wanted all day the rest of your life over and over again—_

Thunder makes a thin, frantic noise; a desperate flash of neon blue shoots through Mike’s skull, almost painful.  Hopeful but scared, amazed but hurting.  Mike can distantly feel hands close on his arms, pushing weakly, shaking.  _I know but please, please you’re too bright you’re too much.  Please gentle,_ gentle _or I’ll…_

He doesn’t know what would happen, doesn’t want to stop but doesn’t know what it would do to him to keep going, and he’s trying to push away and that’s not okay.  Mike lets himself be pushed, breathes out and sinks back into himself a little.  The contact is still there—a hand resting on the bare skin above the hem of Thunder’s jeans, a heavy pulse in the back of his head—but it’s nothing compared to what it was.  Mike blinks hard, seeing through his eyes, feeling out the boundaries of his own skin again, trying to remember what it felt like to be just one person in one body.  Thunder drops back against the couch, shaking all over—Mike didn’t notice him arching up, frozen there, a trembling bow of ecstasy and tension, not even breathing.

 _Thank you_ , he thinks, and it doesn’t feel  _muffled_  exactly, just…quieter.  His eyes are so blown out the blue has almost disappeared; his mouth hangs open as he gasps in air.  It felt like he was burning away, Mike knows because they’re thinking it together, it felt like he’d never find his way back to himself and he’d never even want to.   _God, I’m not gonna survive this what am I doing.  What the_ fuck _are your powers, dude?  Geez._

__

Mike kisses him again, and for a second the  _want_  pounds out of him, he almost falls back into the dizzying confusion of their minds—he forces himself to pull back and hears the tail-end of Thunder’s stuttered moan, feels it against his lips.

“Okay _hnnh_ —” oh shoot, that’s such a cute noise.  Mike kisses the spot he just bit apologetically, and Thunder shudders.  “O-okay, but seriously, _ah_!  Ahh, you gotta, you can’t—ffffeels like you’re…” _pouring yourself out of your skull, emptying yourself out into me, burning yourself out like fuel,_ burning, _it’s exothermic, it consumes its source—_

“It’s fine,” Mike says, breathless.  His skin is electric, his heart is going so fast and hard.  “It’s cool, it’s good it feels so good, bro.”

“You should be…you should take something back.  A-as much as you give.”  Thunder reaches out his hands, like he can see the power in the air—oh shoot, maybe he can.  His eyes are half-closed, but his eyes flicker through their lids, glowing.  And the flow of Mike’s power _changes._

“Ah,” says Mike, startled, and doubles over as something hot and small and coiled in his chest shifts and…and—  “Oh!  Nnh—” And that’s…that’s a lot, that’s—god, that’s… _no, no no stop don’t touch don’t_ take _—_

Thunder startles, alarmed, and pulls away hard, leaving the spinning knot of Mike’s powers alone.  Mike slumps, gasps, presses a hand to his chest.  “Sorry!” Thunder says, mortified.  “Sorry, I didn’t—”

“No—‘s cool, I’m…”  Mike has to stop and gasp a couple of times before the words can come out, catching his breath.  His heart is hammering, and not in a fun way now.  Having that foreign touch in his mind was okay, feeling Thunder push through Mike’s thoughts was a rush, was almost kinda fun, but…that place somewhere deep under his ribs is vital, the _core_ of him, the generator of the hot glow he feels when he uses his powers.  Like Thunder reached through his chest and took hold of his heart.  It was strange and terrible and— _familiar._

Mike slumps forward, braces himself on the couch and tries to catch his breath.

“That was your…”  Thunder is staring at him, confused and alarmed.  “Your powers were…I just didn’t want you to get—” he takes a deep breath or two, forcing himself to stop, and then rakes a hand through his hair and shakes his head.  “…geez, I’m really sorry, dude.”

He is, too, wide-eyed and scared and breathing gentle apology into Mike’s mind.  _Safe,_ he sends, a wash of that cool, blue soothing.  _Safe, sorry, I won’t do that again, you’re safe._   It’s…different, not how it went…last time.  Mike stares at him and focuses on the differences.  The scared blue eyes, the way he reaches out like he’s afraid Mike will break instead of grasping and taking and draining away the light at the core of him.  The way he notices how it makes Mike feel, and apologizes afterward. 

Mike forces himself not to flinch as Thunder reaches out to him, and it feels…it feels really, really good, having those cool hands cup his cheeks and then stroke through his hair.  He feels the barest trace of a thought as they touch, before Thunder hides it— _messed with his power before, somebody reached in there and hurt—what kind of monster—_ before he closes that thought away and focuses more of that calm _shhhh_ on Mike’s mind, easing his thoughts back into order.

_Good work today, Commander Chilton.  Your powers are an invaluable asset to the company._

_No, no no, shhhh, don’t think about that._   Thunder’s thumbs stroke his cheekbones, distracted and distracting, drawing Mike’s attention back to his body, out of the seething mess of anger and pain that surrounds the thought of— _don’t think about him don’t worry about him.  I won’t touch your powers, you’re okay._ But it’s not okay, and he—and—

\-- the empty, endless _drain_ opening up in the core of him, a black hole dragging away at the glowing-gold star in the center of his ribcage, and the more Kane took the more Kane’s powers grew and the more his powers grew the more light Mike had to give and it had hurt _so much_ but he’d been so stupid, so _grateful_ —

“Oh, geez,” says Thunder helplessly, and kisses him.

The spinning dizziness snaps back under Mike’s control.  He gasps, startled, feels teeth nip at his lip and melts into it, letting it happen, pressing into the touch.   His mind tries to sink back down, tries to throw more bad memories at him—Thunder smooths those over, breathing harder against Mike’s lips but battering them back down again. 

“You don’t need—to think about that,” he says, voice thin and strained, and pats awkwardly at Mike’s face, his hair, his shoulders.  He can’t seem to coordinate his hands and his mind and his voice all at the same time—he slurs, his hands are clumsy and timid as his mind whips through Mike’s skull, beating back the nightmares.  “Sorry, dude, sorry—I didn’t mean to.”

He’s so _good._   Mike wants him in ways that make his knees weak, his heart race.  He pushes the bad memories deep down, forces the old hurt away like he has been for years now, makes himself focus again. 

“Sorry,” he says, and Thunder makes a helpless little noise and hesitates, then leans in to kiss him, tentative, fingers threading through Mike’s hair. He’s warm and bony and blushing and present, and memories are just memories, and like hell Kane is going to mess this up, the jerk.  He’d probably love that.  Mike pushes stubbornly at his power, makes himself open up again and both of them gasp as his powers flare back into life like fire suddenly catching, lighting them both up again.  “Whoa!  Hhha—s-sorry.”

“You’re good,” says Thunder, helplessly uncertain, desperate to help but _what if I mess up what if I hurt him again—_ “You’re—so good, you’re—Mike, don’t worry about it, that was all me, you’re okay—”

It takes an effort to make himself smile, but not as big an effort as Mike would’ve expected.  He grins, and Thunder slumps a little bit, relieved.  Geez, he’s such a good dude.

“…hey,” says Mike, and leans back on the couch to grab Thunder’s hips, pulling him into Mike’s lap straddling his thighs.  “C’mere, dude.”  Thunder yelps and then makes a squawky kind of noise as Mike’s hand slips up under his too-big borrowed shirt, feeling along thin ribs and narrow hips, jutting vertebrae and the arch of his collarbones.  “…you’re a real nice guy, y’know?”

“You’re—no,” says Thunder, startled and bewildered and turned on all at the same time, and Mike laughs and flicks a thumb past one nipple—Thunder jerks all over with a bright little spark of shock and embarrassment, then groan softly as Mike gives up on subtlety and tugs hopefully on his shirt, stripping it off, baring a freckled stomach, a pale chest stained pink with blushing. “Ah!  I’m an asshole, I, I, _oh_ , be careful okay?  Don’t—” don’t _burn yourself up like you were before, I don’t wanna feel you give yourself away like that—_

Controlling his powers is kind of a bummer, but the concept of _like you were before_ feels so distressed and full of care and worry, Mike can’t really bring himself to mind.  Especially not now that he’s got the whole bare expanse of Thunder’s torso to put his hands and mouth on.  _Awesome._

“Gimme some credit, dude,” he says, and reaches down to slide his hands back into Thunder’s jeans, swallowing the amazing little shocked whimper he gets into a hungry kiss.  _I think I’m more than capable of blowing your mind without my powers._

Thunder moans sharply, startled—one of the hands that was stroking Mike’s hair clenches in shock, and the hot, sweet sting is… _good,_ just really good.  Mike huffs a breath and tries out his collarbones, the lean muscle of one shoulder, works at his jeans, clumsy and eager, shoving them out of the way.  _You don’t have to,_ Thunder thinks, helplessly, almost more like he’s reassuring himself Mike knows than he thinks Mike needs reminding.  His body arches and pants and whimpers, but his mind is still struggling against feeling good, refusing to let go.  _You can stop if you want to (godohpleaseohdon’tstoppleasethat’sso—)_

 _I’ll remember that,_ Mike thinks back, and strokes him fast and hard, feeling his own callouses, hips twitching into the phantom touch of his own hand as Thunder crumples and pants for breath.  He was worried and he kind of forgot what they were doing, his thoughts are all over the place, but within seconds they’re all drawing up together again, compacting into a single unbearably bright thread of intent and desire.  _I’ll make sure I remember that, if I ever wanna stop._

_I’m_

_You_

_God holy shit holy shit oh my god_

Mike grins into another kiss, gets his free hand down the back of Thunder’s jeans, squeezes a really nice handful of his butt and feels the startled little jolt of shock and pleasure.  Shoves the jeans out of the way, more roughly than he means to.  If the way Thunder actually _whimpers_ and grips Mike’s arms hard enough to bruise is any indication, he doesn’t mind.  _Come on—_ “—come on you’re so close I can feel—” _you can let go you can let it feel good, let me make you feel good you’re so close_ let go _—_

\--

It’s so dark he can’t even see his own hand, and the skull mask is almost burning his skin, but he’s almost there, he can feel it, he can _feel—_

__

Mike’s reaching fingers finds a cool hand in the dark, there and not-there and  _real_ , and the glow of Thunder’s thoughts inside Mike’s head becomes a burn and then a flare and then a searing, all-encompassing, million-colored firestorm of thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes and Mike sees his own face look back at him through eyes that aren’t his and—

\--

“Oh,” says Thunder, soft and almost confused, and goes supernova.

He’s been waiting so long and it almost _hurts_.  There’s a hand clenched in his hair—in Mike’s—in—somebody is touching him, and he’s falling apart and there’s a pair of hands, Mike’s hands are on his skin and—he can’t remember who he is.  He wants  _more._ Can’t tell if it’s him or the mind he’s connected to but both of them are gasping, crying out, breathing the same air, thinking in one unbroken stream of color and feeling and—

It takes Mike a long, long time to put his brain back together after that.  It feels a lot like the time he over-boosted Julie and Dutch and spent a day and a half in a fuzzy gray haze, but…different.  Like he didn’t give as much of himself away this time.  Mike briefly considers what it might do to him to boost both of them _and_ Thunder, and then shivers all over and pockets that thought for now because—wow.  Geez.

“Mm?”  Thunder shifts a little bit—grimaces against Mike’s neck at the places they’re sticky and sweaty and pressed together.  “Wh?”

Oh, shoot.  He was probably picking up some of that.  Mike shakes the thought out of his head and moves slowly, careful, so they both have room to lie down without Thunder’s legs hanging off the edge.  And then he stops, props himself up on one elbow and just…looks.

Thunder is a lazy, fuck-drunk mess, all loose limbs and red cheeks and pale, freckled skin.  Mike’s never seen him—well, he’s never seen the guy before last night, period, but in all the months they’ve been connected Mike’s never _felt_ him so quiet and still inside.  The anxious racing of his thoughts is finally still, soothed to a quiet throb of soft satiation.  Affection and pleasure and happiness and satisfaction form a gentle, pounding hum in Mike’s head, like a heartbeat. 

He looks amazing, and it feels amazing.  Mike curls up around him on the too-small couch, nuzzling his face into the soft skin behind one ear and feeling it like the taste of colors, like the image of a voice, letting it wash over him.

 _Your voice is even nicer green outside my head,_  says Thunder’s voice in his thoughts, foggy and indistinct with sleepy satisfaction.  His big, skinny hands work free of the space between them and press flat to Mike’s sides, like he’s trying to feel a heartbeat.  “I can see you.” And that’s with his voice, hoarse and bleary.  “I see you.”  

_Right down to the core._

 “Mike,” says Mike.

Thunder stirs, half-waking—blinks as what Mike said registers, and then raises his head, brow furrowed.  “…mm?”

“Mike,” says Mike again.  “My name’s Mike.”

Thunder stares at him for a second, then laughs an adorably dumb, snorting laugh and pushes himself up, scrubbing at his face, messing with his hair until it’s in some kind of order.   _We just did_ all of that  _and you think I didn’t pick up your name?_

“You—huh?”

“Did you not hear me?”   _Now the neighbors know your name too, haha oh god why do I have to be the noisy one all the time forever that’s so embarrassing_.  And then, before Mike can get too disappointed about the fact that apparently he was so far inside their heads he missed the sound of Thunder  _screaming his name,_ “—even if I couldn’t pick it out of your head—and I got pretty deep in there, dude, you’re nuts for letting me—whatever.  Even if I hadn’t seen it in there, it’s  _literally_ your superhero name.  And your face is on wanted posters?  Like, literally everywhere in the city.  In the mask you just look a _lot_ like the posters, but without it it’s…pretty obvious, dude.”

Oh.

Oh, right.

“…yyyyyeah,” says Mike. 

“I mean, I thought it might be a fake name, but I guess not.”  Thunder shrugs.  “Don’t worry about it.  I mean, you got my name too, right?”

“What?”  Mike sits up a little.  “No?  I totally didn’t!”

“Oh!”  Thunder blinks.  “Uh…oh.  Well…hi.”  He leans over, reaching down to where Mike is still lying, and holds out a square, skinny hand.  “…I’m Chuck.”

It suits him.  Mike shakes his hand, feeling the connection flow and then ebb back away again like a wave on the lake-shore.  “Chuck,” he says out loud, testing the feeling of the name, and feels his grin growing to cheek-cramping proportions.  “Heh.  Hi.”

“You’re a nerd,” says Chuck without much fervor, and stretches, wincing.  “What time is it?”

“Uh…” Mike pushes himself up and squints at the old, cock-eyed clock over the stove.  “…uh…thirteen—I mean, one.  It’s 1 PM.”

 _Nobody told me being a hero was going to completely dump my circadian rhythm down the toilet,_  Chuck thinks grumpily—out loud he just groans and shakes his head, then reaches up to comb his hair back into a messy ponytail, pulling a hair-tie off one wrist to keep it back out of his eyes.  He props himself up on an elbow and tugs awkwardly at his jeans, and Mike groans a little bit and squeezes him, pulling him in closer, not wanting him to get up yet.  He’s cute, and he’s great, and Mike wants—

 _Dude,_ Chuck says, startled—grimaces, corrects himself, “—Dude, do you seriously want to go again already?”

“I like you,” Mike says blearily, and nuzzles his face under Chuck’s breastbone, ignoring how sticky he is, feeling the warmth of his skin.  “I want—I just _really_ like you, dude.”

“Is that part of your powers?”  Chuck snorts.  “When you like somebody it eliminates your refractory period?  What the hell.”

“Mm.”  Mike doesn’t want to get up yet, he’s still tired, and he’s sweaty and sticky and yeah, not really 100% ready to go again yet, but he also doesn’t want to stop.  He doesn’t want to stop _ever_.  He likes Chuck _so much._

He looks up, and Chuck is looking down at him with this look on his face, startled and…nervous, almost.  Practically scared.  “… _Mike,_ ” he says, very quietly.  He’s full of something soft and golden and rose-flushed.  Mike feels the same way, feels warm and soft and close inside, his power is spinning in a lazy nova in his chest, burning through his bones.  He wants Chuck to know, so he pushes it—holds it out, presses that golden power and sees Chuck’s head tip back, his face go slack and his eyes fall shut.  “ _Oh,_ ” he breathes, and his hands close tight on the cushion beside him, on Mike’s arm where it’s still lying over Chuck’s waist.  Falls back against the arm of the couch, and the sun is falling over his face and a slice of his chest and he’s— _wow,_ he looks like he’s glowing. 

Mike’s phone rings. 

Mike groans and squishes his face against Chuck’s stomach again, but Chuck snorts and shoves him away, reaching out for Mike’s jeans and dragging the phone out of his pocket.  He frowns at the screen for a second, and then says “…It’s Whiptail.”

“Nnuh,” says Mike stubbornly.

“You big baby,” says Chuck, and chews on his lip for a second, then taps the screen decisively and holds it up to his ear.  “…Mike Chilton’s phone.”

There’s a moment or two of silence.  Then, “No, this is, uh.  Thunder,” says Chuck.  Mike, pressed to him skin to skin, feels nervous anxiety as Dutch talks.  Then “Uh, w-well, no, he’s right here,” says Chuck, and warm, pink embarrassment washes over the nerves.  “No!  No—no, yeah, totally.”  A kind of warm, startled pride.  “Y-you too.”  And then a little full-body twitch, and another swell of embarrassment.  Chuck’s voice rises a little bit, squawky.  “I am _not!_   I mean, we’re—no?  Just—gimme a sec!”  He puts a hand over the mouthpiece and looks down at Mike, then kind of jerks his head toward the phone.  Mike huffs, holds up a hand and takes it.

 “Whip,” he says.  “What’s up?”

“ _Hey, man!_ ”  Dutch sounds amused.  “ _Didn’t mean to cut in on somethin’!_ ”

“You—no, yeah, uh.”  So _this_ is what Chuck was embarrassed about.  Right, calling somebody’s phone and getting another hero in a non-emergency situation, that’s…huh.  If Dutch doesn’t know for sure, he can probably guess.  “What do you need, dude?”

“ _I’ve been lookin’ at those spores Kaia used on you a couple months ago, and I think I figured out a new kinda filtration for a gas mask._ ”  On Dutch’s end, something clangs and he hisses softly.  “Ow.  _Aaaand done.  Fixed your bike, too.  You can come get it whenever._ ”

“Oh man, you’re the _best,_ ” says Mike fervently.  “I can come over after lunch.  Uh…” and he can still feel Chuck in the back of his head, a thin hum of nervous uncertainty—he glances up and grins, reassuring.  “…you mind if I bring a friend?”

“ _Bring a…?  Oh!_ ”  Dutch half-laughs, and wow Mike likes him so much.  It’s the same as he feels about Chuck, but different because it’s Dutch, they’re both great and wow, Mike likes them a lot.  “ _You mean Thunder.  Yeah, don’t let me break up the honeymoon._ ”

“Sweet,” says Mike comfortably, and switches the phone to his other hand so he can rest his cheek on Chuck’s chest and just chill there, feeling his heartbeat.  “Anybody else gonna be there?”

A nervous shiver of tension—in Chuck’s body and through his thoughts both at the same time.  Mike squeezes him, comforting, and he settles a little bit but doesn’t quite relax. 

“ _Not unless you want me to call people up_ ,” says Dutch, and Mike sighs.  He really wants to introduce Chuck to _everybody_ and yell about how excited he is, but if it’s gonna freak Chuck out…

 _I could handle it,_ Chuck sighs in his thoughts, a dark wine-red ribbon of unhappy embarrassment.  _Don’t be dumb, I’m fine, I’d be fine, I’m a freaking vigilante.  Call everybody, what do I care?_

“You sure?” says Mike, and then hurriedly, “—not you, Dutch, sorry.  One sec.  You sure, dude?”

“…You trust these guys,” says Chuck quietly, and his eyes flicker over Mike’s face, wide and wary.  “They—I mean, you _really_ trust them?”

“With my life, bro.” 

Chuck takes a couple of deep breaths, and Mike can feel him spreading that deep blue calm over himself again, fighting down a rush of buzzing anxiety.  “Okay,” he says, and one of his hands grips Mike’s shoulder, presses on his back.  “Yeah.  I’ll—I’ll say—I’ll see—yeah.”

“We’ll be there in thirty,” Mike says absently, and Dutch says something laughing about _just enough time for another round, huh—_ before Mike ends the call and just grins at his new buddy instead.  Geez, he’s really cute and really brave and _Mike likes him so much_.  He can’t wait for Chuck to meet his friends so they can all see how cool he is too, and keep him safe and work with him and like him too.  He pushes that thought, holding it up, and Chuck chokes on a snort and rolls his eyes, dropping his head back on the arm of the couch again. 

“Dork,” he says, without much force.  “Who’s showering first?”

Mike smiles at him, eyes wide and innocent.  “But we already showered today, dude.”

Chuck stares at him for a long second, mouth hanging open, and then Mike cracks a grin and Chuck sputters and bursts out laughing, untangling himself from Mike’s arm with an effort.  “You’re _gross_!” he says, “You’re a—sweaty, gross dork and I _whoa._ ”  He stumbles getting up, legs wobbling, laughs an adorable snorting laugh.  “You’re so dumb.”

“Uh-huh,” says Mike, and lets his thoughts linger on the pale line of Chuck’s spine as he stretches.  Chuck jumps like Mike said something, glances back over his shoulder suspiciously—Mike grins at him and looks really hard at his butt instead, focusing his thoughts on how much he likes it.  Chuck glares at him harder, but his face is going red.  A mental shove hits Mike’s thoughts, _quit that you freakin’ perv_ —Mike blinks, momentarily forgetting what he was thinking about, and then folds his arms behind his head and goes right back to staring at Chuck’s butt.

“I’m gonna go shower,” says Chuck, and tugs his jeans up as they start to slide down. Mike’s libido immediately mentally subtracts the jeans from the equation completely—Chuck jumps all over and makes a weird little squeaking noise.  “Hff— _geez,_ Mike!”

“And then after you shower we’re goin’ to Whiptail’s,” says Mike, distracted from Chuck’s cute butt by Dutch’s clever hands and dark eyes. 

“And then after I shower, _you’re_ gonna shower,” Chuck corrects him, “And then—and then we can go to Whiptail’s.”

By the time Mike gets out of the shower Chuck has stolen a new shirt out of his bedroom—an old one that Mike outgrew and then shoved into the bottom of his drawer.  It’s still too baggy on him, but at least it fits across the shoulders.  With the torn jeans and the bruised lip and cheekbone, he actually looks pretty tough!

 _Yeah right,_ thinks Chuck, and tugs his boots on, tucks his shirt in, swings his backpack over his shoulder.  “Are we going or what?”

“One sec,” says Mike, and grabs Chuck’s shoulder, pulls him down and kisses him again, just fast and sweet, feeling their connection open.  He sends as much _you’ll be fine you’ll be great they’ll think you’re awesome_ as he can fit into the second of contact, and when he pulls back Chuck is smiling at him, bemused and fond and maybe a little bit less nervous.  “Okay.  Now we can go.”

“Does he live…close?”

“Close-ish,” says Mike.  “Like, ten minutes on a bike.  My good bike’s at Whip’s place already, but he gave me a replacement until I got my baby back.”

“ _Bike_?” repeats Chuck, a hilarious kind of squawk, and goes pink when Mike grins at him questioningly.  “It—no, it’s, I’m fine, I just…uh.  Do you drive…safe?”

“I have a helmet!” says Mike cheerfully as they step into the elevator.  “—and a spare!”

“Oh, good,” says Chuck faintly. 

“Right?”  They step out on the ground floor, headed for the main doors.  Mike speeds up, already excited to get back on his bike and take off—Chuck falters, steps slowing, at the sight of the door.  Mike glances back and catches a flash of something— _could_ _change everything it was going so well why change it’s not safe you could end this now—_ Chuck’s hands work at his sides, his eyes flicker from Mike to the door and his throat works.

“Dude?” says Mike.  “You coming, or…?”

“What are we?” says Chuck.

“Huh?”

“What are we?” he repeats, and waves a hand between him and Mike, a vague, all-encompassing kind of gesture.  “You, I mean, and me, and you and them, and…me and them, I guess—”

“We’re a team,” says Mike firmly, and crosses back across the room, away from the door.  “…If…if you wanna be.”

Chuck swallows hard.  Licks his split lip, and there’s a whole mess of stuff under the surface of his thoughts that Mike can’t quite make out, secret identities and villains and _home-safe-compromised_ and something red, black and white that throbs like a sore tooth under the rest of it.  But he just takes a deep breath, and looks at Mike for a second, and the worry eases a little bit.  Very slowly, he steps forward.

“Yeah,” he says, soft and shaky.  “…I think I’d like that, dude.”

“Okay!” Mike laughs, relieved and glad, lit up with it.  “Cool, awesome!  Welcome to the team, dude!  You ready?”

“Not even close,” says Chuck, and works one big hand into Mike’s, wrapping their fingers together like he’s not sure he’s allowed.  “But—sure.”

“Awesome,” says Mike, and steps out into the sunshine.  “Let’s do this!”

 


End file.
